7KBW Expertise

7KBW has maintained an enviable reputation and experience in all aspects of insurance and reinsurance; shipping and transport; civil fraud; professional negligence; international trade and commodities; energy, oil and gas; agency; injunctions and arrests; shipbuilding; sale of goods; banking and financial services; futures and derivatives; aviation; media and communications; construction; conflicts of law; and international investment.

Arbitrators/Mediators

7KBW is a founder member of the London Court of international Arbitration. The majority of senior members regularly sit as arbitrators and are happy to accept ad hoc appointments, or appointments via arbitral institutions such as the ICC, SIAC, CAS, HKIAC, LMAA and ICDR.

Pupillage at 7KBW

A maximum of 4 twelve month pupillages are available per year. Applications should be made via the Pupillage Gateway 2019 season for pupillages commencing in September 2020 or (for deferred applications) commencing in September 2021.

Lord Mance

Practice Profile

Lord Mance sat from 1993 to 1999 as a Commercial Judge. He was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 1999, and appointed to the House of Lords in 2005 where he spent four years as a Law Lord before becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court on its formation in 2009.

He has wide-reaching experience of international, commercial and European law, having written many judgments in all these areas as both first instance and appellate levels.

Lord Mance is currently Chair of the International Law Association. He is also a member of the Judicial Integrity Group (responsible for the Bangalore Principles on Judicial Conduct).

At The Bar he specialised in commercial law including insurance and reinsurance, professional negligence (particularly of accountants, auditors, brokers and lawyers), banking and international trade. He was a founder director of the Bar Mutual Indemnity Insurance Fund Ltd and chaired various Banking Appeals Tribunals. He also sat as an arbitrator.

While on the bench, he sat on the Council of Europe’s Consultative Council of European Judges, becoming its first elected chair from 2000 to 2003. In the House of Lords, he chaired a sub-committee of the European Union Select Committee, scrutinising proposals concerning European law and institutions, and contributing to the Committee’s report on the Treaty of Lisbon 2009. He also led a group working on domestic enforcement of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and a delegation reporting on the problem of impunity in relation to violence against women in the Congo.

From 2010 to 2018 he served on the seven-person panel established by article 255 TFEU to report on candidates’ suitability to serve as Judge or Advocate-General in the European Court of Justice.

Lord Mance has good German and reasonable French, having worked in both, and reads (but speaks limited) Spanish.

Specific cases can be found below, mostly in which Lord Mance wrote judgments:

West Tankers Inc v RAS Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta Spa [2007] UKHL 4 (reference to Court of Justice on power to injunct a party to an arbitration agreement from pursuing court proceedings within the EU)

1982 - 1993: QC; admitted ad hoc in Hong Kong and The Bahamas; also arbitrator and from 1990 recorder and then deputy High Court Judge

1966 - 1993: 7 King’s Bench Walk (commercial chambers)

1965 – 66: Common and commercial law pupillages

Jan - Sept 1965: intern in Hamburg law firm (now Freshfields).

Other Associated Activities:

2017-2018: One of group of senior judges advising the UK Government on the technical implications of Brexit for the UK legal system.

2010-2018: Member of the seven-person panel from across Europe, appointed by the Council of Ministers under Article 255 TFEU (2009) to consider and report on the suitability of candidates to act as judges or advocates-general of the European Court of Justice.

2011 to date: Founder member and member of Senate of the European Law Institute and member of its three-person arbitral committee.

2009 to date: Chair of the Executive Council of the International Law Association, (www.ila-hq.org/en).

2009 to date: President of British-German Jurists’ Association.

2008 to date: Member of Judicial Integrity Group responsible for the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct

2008: Leader of six-person delegation of Europeans and Africans to report on Justice, Impunity and Sexual Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (for the Swedish Foundation for Human Rights and the All Party Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa. (http://www.appggreatlakes.org/index.php/appg-reports-mainmenu-35/116-sexual-violence-report-published).

2007-2009: Member of House of Lords European Union Select Committee and Chair of its sub-committee on European Law and Institutions.

2004-2009: Judge responsible for representing and coordinating UK judicial response to the European initiative to develop a common “contractual frame of reference” (the “CFR” project).

2003-2011: UK representative on the Board of Trustees of the European Law Academy, Trier.

2000-2012: UK representative on the Council of Europe’s (“CoE’s”) Consultative Council of European Judges (“CCJE”) (www.coe.int/CCJE). Elected and re-elected as its first chair 2000-2003.

2000-2002: President of British Insurance Law Association (BILA).

Other Activities:

Honorary Professor of Law, King’s College, London, as from November 2018

Foreign and Comparative Law in the Courts: (2001) 36 Texas Int. Law Journal 415

2001

Article 8: a new law of privacy: (1999) J.S.B.J, 7, 11-13

1999

Insolvency at Sea (Donald O’May lecture in Maritime Law, Southampton University: (1995) LMCLQ 34, advocating reform of the Third Party (Rights against Insurers) Act 1930, achieved by Third Party (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010

16 Nov 1994

Insurance Brokers’ negligence: Int Broker 1993, Sep, 5-9

1993

The operation of an "all debts" reservation of title clause: 1992 LMCLQ, 1(Feb), 35-39

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Latest News

The President of the Republic of Singapore has appointed Lord Mance as international judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) for a period of 2 years commencing 5th January 2019. Lord Mance, 75, who read law at University College, Oxford, was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1965 and appointed Queen’s […]

Lord Mance has re-joined chambers at 7 King’s Bench Walk, following his retirement as Deputy President of The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on 6th June 2018. He is available for appointment as arbitrator in a wide variety of cases, particularly international, commercial and investment arbitration. Lord Mance sat from 1993 to 1999 as […]

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7KBW on Twitter

7KBW members Gavin Kealey QC, Julia Dias QC and Rebecca Sabben Clare QC will be speaking at the London International Disputes Week @LIDW19 in May 2019. More details on the sessions and locations can be found here. bit.ly/2TAEW7T#LIDW19